


where the love light gleams

by RoamingSignals



Series: Make the Yuletide Gay [4]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21946960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoamingSignals/pseuds/RoamingSignals
Summary: Being alone paints everything a colder color, and the snow is still spinning outside of Mark's kitchen window, but he kisses Yuta and everything turns so much bright, gold and red and green and white, God. He's missed this. He's missed having someone so warm in his hands.Better than a lonely Christmas.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Nakamoto Yuta
Series: Make the Yuletide Gay [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567384
Comments: 19
Kudos: 213





	where the love light gleams

**Author's Note:**

> this is the last one I completed! again, all of ot21 has a role in this universe I just don't have the brain power ;lsdjf but I think the ones I ended up writing are very cute! 
> 
> I hope everyone has a happy christmas. if you want to be with your families, I hope you are! If you want to be with your friends, I hope you are. I hope, no matter what, you're happy.

Mark is going to eat ramen for dinner and go to bed. That's his plan.

He cracks an egg into the broth the way Doyoung told him to, and he puts on his comfy pajama pants and he turns on the Great British Bake-Off because it's what he deserves, but when he's finished his dinner and he knows who the Star Baker is Mark’s still wired. Honestly, Mark blames it on exams — he's finished his semester but the sheer panic of not having studied enough is still settled into his blood. Like hell he's going to study any more theory when he's finished his classes over a week ago, but his brain is telling him it's time to cram.

The empty bowl is cold in his hands. Mark splays himself out over the couch and sighs. He's wearing his comfiest socks. His hair is still wet from the shower, and his body is exhausted, sleep-deprived to the point that his brain can barely put two sentences together. He rubs a hand down his face.

Outside, it's late and cold and the city is screaming with last minute shopping and laughing and singing and it's sweet, really. There's a gentle overlay during Christmas, like everyone is wrapped up in the excitement and they build the atmosphere together. Everyone sees the tree in the square and feels the same bubbly feelings, and everyone wants something hot in their hands, and everyone wants to see someone important to them.

This is the first Christmas Mark is spending alone.

Other years, he's gone home to visit his parents, but the flight to Canada was too expensive. His brother said he'd come and visit in January with the baby, but it's different. He probably won't see his family for the rest of the year. It sucks, truly.

Even if he doesn't go home, normally at least one of his roommates stays, but Daniel skipped town as soon as the semester was over and Yerim bounced to go stay with her girlfriend and her family, and it's nice because Mark can do whatever he wants until December 28th when she gets back, but it's lonely in every other way.

Mark is lonely.

He sighs. With a groan, he takes his bowl and walks into the kitchen, tosses it in the sink atop the pot he'd made his dinner in and won't clean up until tomorrow night at the earlier. The small window over their sink is frosted over with the cold, and it's snowing outside. If he squints, Mark can see the dumpster covered in snow. He wonders if the cat that lives in the alley found a place to stay for the winter. She probably is fine. She's the only constant in Mark's life.

Mark touches the chilled glass, makes a heart with red-tipped fingers, and decides that he needs something sweet.

Jeno can cook okay, not to the point where he can judge Mark for his lack of ability, but enough to have a few tricks up his sleeve. "Let me change your life," he'd said two weeks ago, before making the best cup of hot cocoa Mark had ever had. It's what Mark wants.

So he takes out his pot and he vaguely remembers the things that Jeno did to warm him up from the inside, and by the end of it he has something that's good but doesn't taste warm in the same way. But Mark had someone with him the last time, and the lack of it paints things a colder color.

He slaps his face slightly before pouring the cocoa into an old mug. "Mark, get it together," he tells himself. He should text someone and make lunch plans tomorrow. He's not usually so lonely.

Pulling out his phone, Mark rifles through possible candidates, and sees a message pop up on his phone in real time. _Don't thank me but also, thank me profusely._ From Taeil.

Mark doesn't know Taeil that well. He sends him a string of questions marks. The whoosh of the _sent_ sound overlaps with the knock on his door.

He wonders if Yerim forgot something. He wonders if the Amazon guy is confused again. He wonders if his neighbor needs an entire pound of sugar again and braces himself for the prospect of turning her away. "Coming," he grumbles, hiking up his shorts and holding his mug in both hands. It smells like chocolate and vanilla. The apartment smells like boy smell and mistletoe.

There's another knock, almost impatient.

"Yeah, yeah." Mark ruffles his hair. He probably looks like a rooster. He doesn't care what the Amazon guy thinks of him. He unlocks the door, takes off the chain, careful of the wreath as he swings the door open.

"Hey," says the ghost of Christmas Present, standing on his doorstep with a suitcase and a beanie and his hair is dyed _red_ and he looks like a dream.

Mark blinks, spoon from the hot cocoa hanging out of his mouth, dumbfounded for three ticks of the clock before his brain realizes this isn't a ghost, but a person — _his_ person.

"Yuta?"

With a blinding grin, Yuta reaches forward and takes Mark's mug away from him, moments before he'd have dropped it on the carpet in his shock. "Honey, I'm home." His hair is so long. It pokes out from underneath his hat, a brilliant scarlet, and it's shocking but not more shocking than him being here in the first place.

Mark makes a strangled noise. "You're here?" He touches the lapel of Yuta's jacket, and Yuta's smile turns wicked as he takes a drink of Mark's hot cocoa. "You bastard."

"Dude," Yuta says, eyebrows up, staring at the mug, "this is good? What the fuck?"

He's not crying. Mark is not crying.

"Don't _dude_ me." Normally Mark wouldn't mind, because that's how they talk to each other, how they've always talked to each other, but right now he's almost hysterical. "I'm your fucking _boyfriend_."

Gently, Yuta sets the mug down on the table by the door and opens his arms, still smiling, but Mark throws himself into them and he's not smiling. His mouth is quivering, trying to hold something back. It's been so long.

"You said your family wouldn't let you leave," Mark says, weak, and he thinks Yuta smells like the airport and body odor but under it all he's wearing the same cologne he used to, the one Mark had bought him when he'd finally had money to buy a gift. It's not great cologne. Mark breathes it in, thick in the juncture of Yuta's neck. "You said you wouldn't be coming back until March."

"I'm a filthy liar," Yuta tells him solemnly. It's a joke, but there's something serious in the way he's rubbing Mark's back like he knows he's on the edge of something. "My internship is still over in March but…"

"They let you come home?"

Yuta holds him tight. "Yeah, they let me come home."

Mark takes a deep breath until he remembers how happy he is. He's beaming. "How long?"

A beat of silence. "My flight back to Japan leaves on the second."

"Oh my God." Mark is reeling. "That's so long. You're home for so long." He cups Yuta's face in both hands. Laughing. Bright. A complete turn around from his lonely moping. The hot cocoa is forgotten on the table. "I haven't seen you in so long."

Months, really, but Yuta is solid right now, real and tangible and right in front of him.

He's not a romantic, but Yuta is, and they're both sentimental. Mark barely knows what to say, trying to keep himself from bursting.

Yuta looks up at the top of the doorway. "No mistletoe?" he asks, cheeky. "I'm disappointed."

"Dude, shut up," Mark snips, and he's throwing his arms around Yuta's neck and pressing their lips together.

Being alone paints everything a colder color, and the snow is still spinning outside of Mark's kitchen window, but he kisses Yuta and everything turns so much bright, gold and red and green and white, God. He's missed this. He's missed having someone so warm in his hands.

Yuta kisses him back without teasing, because they've both missed this, and melts Mark down to the core, like the winter never happened. His nose is bright red and freezing when it grazes Mark's cheek, but Mark just giggles, giddy, bubbling over.

"I bought the plane ticket three days ago," Yuta admits, breathless, into Mark's jaw, kiss after kiss after kiss pressed into smooth skin. "My mom threw a fit, but my dad helped me pack."

"Three days?" Mark kisses Yuta's cheek, his cold nose, pulls back with a grin. He leads Yuta in to the living room after locking the door, helps Yuta take off his gloves and his coat and they're both smiling like they've never heard an unhappy word in their lives. "You're crazy, man."

"You're stupid," kiss, "voice message," kiss, "made me cry at work."

Mark remembers. That hadn't been his intention; he'd wanted to encourage Yuta through what he knew was frustrating for the both of them. Hopes dashed, cancelled plans, their meeting again push back by months because of obligations and familial duty. Mark had planned to go home, and that fell through, and Yuta had planned to come into town and that fell through, and now neither of those things matter because Yuta made it happen.

"Is that why you missed our Skype call last night?" Mark asks.

"I didn't want to give up the surprise." Yuta's smile is sleepy and languide, and his hands are wrapped around Mark's middle as they're draped atop each other on the couch. "You taste like pork seasoning."

"I had ramen," Mark admits, huffing a laugh. He buries his face in Yuta's neck again. They fit together so well. It's easy to forget when the miles between them are so wide.

"Tomorrow we'll bother Doyoung for a meal," Yuta says, decisive, and his bare fingers are chilly as they slide under Mark's shirt, grazing bare skin and goosebumps. "God, you're here. I can't believe you're here. It's crazy."

Mark laughs, only slightly because he's ticklish. His stomach clenches with the butterflies, dead in the winter but revived when Yuta brought the spring in. "I live here."

"With _me_ ," Yuta breathes, and Yuta isn't great at saying things out loud either, but it's reverent, and Mark understands, because they have always understood each other. "Can't believe you're here with me."

The jet lag takes Yuta out, and they don't bother unpacking his bag. He climbs into one of the sweatshirts he'd left here for Mark, already slept in, and Mark takes off his shirt because he hates wearing one in bed, and Yuta lays his head on Mark's stomach. "We have so many days." It's so quiet Mark almost misses it. The street lights flicker outside the bedroom window, but there are so many blankets on the bed, and another body, Mark doesn't think about outside at all. This room has everything he needs.

"Not that many days," Mark says, also soft, also quiet, running his hands through the hair Yuta has painstakingly grown out.

"Really?" Yuta mumbles sleepily against Mark's skin. "I think we have forever."

"Forever, huh?" Mark giggles. "That sounds nice."

Better than a lonely Christmas.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, everyone.


End file.
